The Barkley Marathons Win Again As No Runners Complete The Course For Second Consecutive Year
The 2026 edition of the Barkley Marathons has come and gone with no finishers for the second year in a row, as cold rain, thick fog and an unusually early start proved too much for the field.
Around 40 runners from 15 countries gathered at Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee for the secretive ultramarathon. At 6 a.m. on Saturday 14th February, the earliest start in the race’s 40-year history, founder Gary Cantrell, known as Lazarus Lake, lit his traditional cigarette to signal the beginning of the race.
What is the Barkley Marathons?
The Barkley is designed to break runners. The course, which is roughly 120 to 130 miles depending on the year and includes significant elevation gain, consists of five loops of more than 20 miles each through unmarked terrain in Tennessee’s Cumberland Mountains.
GPS devices are banned, they are only allowed to wear a watch that is issued to them that is set to the 60 hour time limit, and runners must navigate the route using only a map and compass.
Although water is available at certain points on the route, there are no traditional aid stations. Once runners are on a loop, they cannot receive help from anyone other than their fellow runners, but can receive help from their crew once they are back at camp. However, the clock does not stop running.
Along the way, they have to tear out specific pages from books hidden in the route that match their bib number to prove they’ve followed the correct route, and they get a new bib number for each loop. Missing a page means disqualification. It is believed that there were 13 books for the runners to find this year, although it has previously been between 10-15 books.
Racers get 60 hours to finish all five loops, and each loop has its own cut off time. If a runner does not complete the loop they are on in time to start the next one before the cut off, they are tapped out when they return to camp by a bugler playing Taps. Since the event began in 1986, only 20 people have completed it, with 26 total finishes. That’s roughly 2% of the total entrants.
How this years race played out
This year’s timing added another layer of difficulty. The Barkley Marathons usually take place in late March or early April, so a mid-February start left the runners with less daylight than normal, which combined with relentless rain turning the trails into slick, muddy slopes, resulted in conditions deteriorating fast. Fog rolled in overnight, reducing visibility and making navigation even harder on the largely off-trail route.
Only 12 runners managed to complete the first loop within the time limit, the lowest number ever recorded. Just four made it through two loops and headed back out for the third loop: Sébastien Raichon (France), Damian Hall (UK), Mathieu Blanchard (France) and Max King (Oregon, USA).
Hall returned from his third loop without all the required book pages, and was disqualified from the race. Blanchard dropped during the third lap due to the cold, while King bowed out after struggling to find enough of the hidden books in worsening fog.
In the end, only France’s Sébastien Raichon completed a third loop. He finished loop three in 38:05:46, which left him being tapped out after not completing the loop in time to start the fourth loop before the 36 hour cut off. However, he did earn what’s known as a “Fun Run”, which is awarded to runners who complete three loops in under 40 hours. But because he missed the 36-hour cutoff required to start the fourth lap, his race was over.
The event’s secrecy remains part of its mystique. Runners learn the exact start time within a 12-hour window, and a conch shell blast gives them one hour’s warning. Runners do not know the route ahead of time, but are given access to the master map before the race to copy onto their own maps. The identities of the runners are typically revealed gradually through social media updates from Keith Dunn on Bluesky and X, the race’s unofficial chronicler.
The Barkley Marathons gained wider attention after the 2014 documentary “The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young.” In 2024, five runners finished, including Britain’s Jasmin Paris, who became the first woman ever to complete the race. But the past two years have belonged entirely to the course.
This time, as fog swallowed the mountains and the clock ticked past key cutoffs, the result was clear: the Barkley Marathons won again.
